Grace in Wonderland
by Felyndiira
Summary: Summary unnecessary, title pretty much tells you what you need to know, but I assure you the full regular cast will be making appearances - in modified forms.
1. Chapter 1

_(Author's Note: Another plot bunny snuck out from under my bed in the middle of the night... and so I bring you hopefully the first installment of a much larger story - if it finds favor with my fans and reviewers. Regretfully, I do not own the characters of "The Nanny", I only play with them in my mind. Nor do I own "Alice in Wonderland". Darn it all.)_

Chapter 1: Down the Mouse Hole

Grace Sheffield sat in her room staring at a piece of paper in her hand with a glum look on her face. Once again, another Mother's Day was upon her, and yet again a special Mother's Day project had been assigned to her class. "Write a one page paper about something you and your mother have in common." She looked over at the picture of her mother sitting on the corner of her desk and sighed. *_I can't stretch "We both have blonde hair" to fill a whole page._* She thought about asking her brother or sister, or her father or Niles if anything about her reminds them of Mother. But it makes them sad to talk about her, especially her father, and Grace hates to see her family sad. Last year, she had spent a whole afternoon up in the attic looking for any of her mother's things, but found very little that was helpful. As she thought about it more, the items in the attic started with the wedding album and went through the birth of the three Sheffield children. Surely there must be some of Mother's things here from before she became Sarah Sheffield. *_Where else might they be?*_

As if a light bulb went off in her head, it came to her, "The basement!". She got up, pulled the flashlight out of the nightstand by her bed, checked that it had a steady bean, and with determination and purpose headed towards the stairs to the basement. No one hardly ever went down into the basement, but it was the only storage space in the house besides the attic and the closets_._ Surely things of her mother's, if they were still here, would be stored away where they wouldn't be seen. The house was fairly quiet. They had a day off from school for some scheduled maintenance work. Nanny Fine had taken Maggie and Brighton to the dentist, and Grace had escaped going because she had just had to have a baby tooth removed. Her father and Miss Babcock were working at the office today, and Niles had mentioned going grocery shopping at breakfast this morning. With all their busy schedules, no one gave a thought to leaving Grace home completely alone. Sometimes that's the way it was when you are the youngest, you get forgotten.

Reaching the basement door, Grace mentally crossed her fingers it wasn't locked and gave a sigh of relief to find it wasn't. She flipped the switch, and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling lit up the room rather poorly. After propping open the door so it couldn't close behind her by accident, she made her way down the stairs and looked around. There were pieces of furniture, trunks, and boxes scattered about the room. Several of them seemed to be leftover boxes of programs or materials from her father's plays and musicals. She moved farther back, away from the stairs, and her eyes lit up when she saw a small brown trunk that had gold letters "SSP" on it. She knew her mother's maiden name was Porterfield, so that must be her mother's! She settled her skirt and sat on the floor in front of it, and again crossed her fingers it wasn't locked. Unfortunately, it was. She frowned, desperately wanting to know what was in the trunk.

Just then a small metallic "clink" came from her left. Turning the flashlight, she saw a small silver key laying on the ground. Tentatively, she reached for it, and looking back and forth between it and the trunk, shrugged and tried the key. It worked! She slowly pushed open the lid, and smiled at the pile of yearbooks, letters, and who knows what other things of her mother's might be inside. She picked up the first item. It was a small leather journal, and opening it, she saw it was a journal her mother had written in college. There were notes about homework assignments, phone numbers, random bits of poetry. Just seeing her mother's handwriting brought tears to her eyes, but always in control of her emotions, she fought them back. She set the journal down and reached for one of the yearbooks. It was for a high school here in New York, a well to do one. There were several comments from her classmates about wishing her well in college, and what a great writer she'll be. Looking down at her mother's picture, not much older than Maggie now, the resemblance was striking. She reached out and ran a finger across the picture. "I miss you, Mom." She closed her eyes and focus on her breathing to calm her nerves as her therapist had taught her.

Suddenly, a much louder crash came from behind her. Turning around with her flashlight, she was shocked to see a small white mouse. Her first instinct was to scream until she realized the mouse was standing on his hind legs and pulling a pocketwatch... out of his wainscoat pocket... and making a "tsk tsk tsk" noise that she could hear clearly even though he was small and so far away. Dropping back down on all fours, he took off at a run and disappeared between two boxes along the far wall.

Grace was frozen with indecision, but her curiosity got the better of her. It was only a little mouse, she was much bigger than it. It took a lot of strength to push the two boxes aside, and she stared in shock at what she saw. She had expected to find a mouse hole - which she did, but it was easily 2 feet tall and wide enough she could crawl through it easily. *_What on earth is a tunnel doing in our basement? Where does it go?* _She took a deep breath, and dropped to her hands & knees and slowly began to crawl into the hole, holding the flashlight firmly in her right hand so she could see the floor in front of her. *_Maybe its a secret passage that leads to another house, or a secret room, or...* _

Grace's thoughts were interrupted as her hand fell right through the floor - or at least where the floor should have been - and her other hand, then her torso, and then her legs tumbled after it in slow motion. She began to scream as she began to fall into the darkness, and then she knew no more._  
_


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Too Big and Too Small

Grace awoke to find herself in a very odd situation; she appeared to be in free fall, wearing a blue dress with a white apron tied on it, yet the skirt wasn't blowing up at all at her downward movement, and all around here were odd bits of furniture, paper, and other odd bits. The flashlight had disappeared from her hand, and glancing around, her forehead furrowed in thought until like a light bulb it came to her. *I know this scene, this is from "Alice in Wonderland"!* Looking down, she could see an endless hole below her, no idea how long the falling would take.

Grace took the time to review her memories of the story so she could be prepared for whatever happened next in the dream, because it HAD to be a dream certainly. She thinks when she lands she finds the table with the bottle to drink and the cookies to eat that make her big and small, and she needed to do them in the right order to pass through a tiny door into the world of Wonderland.

After what seemed like quite a long time, she could feel a change in her speed, before landing softly on the floor of a room with only a tunnel leading outwards from where she had landed. She walked confidently down the hallway, certain she was remembering the story correctly. There would be a little door, and the key was in the table, so she had to get the key, make herself small enough to use it on the door & go through. Seemed quite easy enough.

Until the tunnel sloped downward and came to a dead end. No door, no table, nothing to eat or drink, nothing. Grace frowned, because there had been no other turns or passages to go down, this HAD to be the right place. She began walking around, feeling the walls, looking for something. Unable to find anything, she kicked the wall in her frustration, noticing the little black shoes on her white stocking clad feet. A chuck of the dirt wall collapsed at her kick - revealing a golden doorknob. Grace began to kick at the wall over and over again and soon enough, the small door she had expected to find was revealed. She knelt down in front of it and gingerly tried the knob. Locked - as expected. She glanced around the room, but no sign of the table where the key would be found. *I need the key, where is the key?*

Just then a small metallic "clink" came from beneath her. Laying on the floor right below the pocket of her apron was the silver key for her mother's trunk. *No, certainly it couldn't be...* But Grace picked up the key, and slipped it into the lock, and with a gentle twist, felt the lock move, and the handle now easily opened to reveal the space beyond. Grace stared in shock, it was as green a garden as she had ever seen, with giant flowers, huge trees, blades of grass as tall as she was. She let herself get excited at the prospect of exploring such a beautiful place until she remember, she was still too big to go through the door.

She looked around the bare room, the only thing in it besides her was the pile of dirt she had knocked off of the wall. *No way would she eat dirt* Grace sat for awhile, before licking a finger, sticking it in the dirt, and closing her eyes, sticking her finger in her mouth. Immediately - she felt a bump on her head. She opened her eyes to see that she had grown and now completely filled the space, barely able to move an inch. *This is terrible - now I'm trapped here, what will I do?* In frustration, tears began to flood down her large cheeks, and with the room being so slow, and only the tiny door for water to escape, the room began to fill with the water of her tears. Which just made her cry harder, *I'm going to drown in my own tears if I don't stop this!*. The next tear that slipped down her cheek, she caught with her tongue, and immediately she felt herself shrink. She continued to catch tear after tear until she returned to her normal size, and then kept catching them until she was small enough float through the water through the door.

Her adventure in Wonderland was now beginning - but she had quickly learned that what she thought she knew, she didn't in this strange place.


End file.
